LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1904.

CONTENTS.-No. 10.

NOTES:-Dantelana, 181-"Silly Billy." 183-Bibliography
of Publishing and Bookselling, 184-Robert Boyle on the
Bible, 186-Japanese Names-Genealogy: New Sources-
"Auncell"-Hockday: Pottage called Hok-Mrs. Gaskell's
'Sylvia's Lovers,' 187.

QUERIES:-Latin Quotations - Paolo Avitabile, 188-
Charles the Bold-Admiral Byng-Miss Lewen and Wesley
- Schoolmasters - Thomas Goodwin, D.D. - Verses on
Women" Bridge": its Derivation - Cuplahills - Old
Bugland"-Thackeray Quotation, 189-Webster's Basque
Legends' Harepath - Quotations - Penn's Fruits of
Solitude,' 190.

REPLIES:-Tideswell and Tideslow, 190-Earl of Egremont,

192-Glowworm or Firefly Merry Thoughts in a Sad Place'" My Lord the Sun"-Fellows of the Clover Leaf The Oxford English Dictionary'- Fictitious Latin Plurals King of Patterdale". Football on Shrove Tuesday-Sleeping King Arthur--" Quice," 194-Honour of Tutbury-Milestones-Breaking Glass at Jewish Weddings-"Travailler pour le Roi de Prusse -"Cockshut time," 195-Torch and Taper-Epitaph at Doncaster, 196 Son of Napoleon I.-Raleigh's Head-"Coup de Jarnac -Hundred Courts, 197 -Chauceriana-Guide to Manor Rolls-A. C. Swinburne-Court Posts under Stuart Kings Book Collectors - Records of Mount Grace-William Hartley-Foscarinus, 193.

NOTES ON BOOKS: -Hakluyt's

Navigations' - Solon's

Old English Porcelain-Treasure's 'Breton Grammar --Wheatley's 'Gerrard Street and its Neighbourhood' 'William Savory of Brightwalton.'

Notices to Correspondents.

Notes.
DANTEIANA.

1. 'INF.,' xiv. 96:

Sotto il cui rege fu già il mondo casto.

But

For manuscript variants of the line the student should read Dr. Moore's exhaustive examination of the rival claims of Pur and Più ('Textual Criticism,' p. 307). Piu has 160 supports, while Pur reckons only 59. there can be no hesitation as to the correct reading, despite Witte's curious advocacy of Piu. The latter, as Dr. Moore rightly says, "has little or no point at all, when looked into, though the expression seems so plain in itself. It would also miss the undoubted symbolical significance of the fact here mentioned, which is that assigned to it by Buti, non si può scendere nell' inferno se non si va a sinistra, cioè per la via dei

vizi significata per la sinistra.'

Why Mr. Tozer (English Commentary,' p. 78) has rendered casto as "innocent" Other variants worth noting are: Pur da not easy to say. I note the rendering in no sinistra in MS. 85 (Batines, 318), in Turin supercilious spirit, but because it appears to University Library, of the fifteenth century, me to be as farfetched as it is inaccurate. of which "the text generally is a very poor To be "chaste" is of course to be "inno-one"; a man sinistra in F MS., Bodleian, cent" of its opposite vice, but it by no means implies innocency in every other form. Dante's thought was less restricted, and evidently followed Juvenal's phrase (Satire vi.): Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris,

which Dryden correctly englished

In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth, There was a thing call'd chastity on earth. And Cary translates Dante's line fairly correctly as

Under whose monarch, in old times, the world Lived pure and chaste. Scartazzini also has " Rege: Saturno. Casto: puro, senza vizj," and refers to the 'Eneid,' viii. 319 seq., where we read that Saturn

Genus indocile, ac dispersum montibus altis, Composuit, legesque dedit,

fifteenth century (Batines, 495), "full of bold and original, not to say audacious, changes," and in a MS. British Museum (Batines, 482), "a beautifully executed MS. on vellum, probably of the second half of the fifteenth century. "Alla man destra occurs 'Inf.,' ix. 132, which may possibly have misled the copyist. MS. 25 (Batines, 139) has Per via sinistra, in the Biblioteca Riccardiana at Florence, "a folio MS. on vellum, the earlier part of which is very clearly and well written, and looks like late fourteenth century." Tu a sinistra is given by MS. 54 (Batines, 329), a Vatican MS. of "latish fourteenth century," and MS. 106 (Batines, 439) in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, “a very inferior text, full of peculiar readings and blunders, about the middle of the fifteenth century."

་

3. Ibid., xv. 4 :—

Quale i Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia. An unusually attractive discussion owes its birth to this line; and, as with the Irish Round Towers, finality is not yet reached. Guizzante is still in search of its Edipus, though MR. J. G. ALGER posed as such in these columns (8th S. ii. 101), somewhat overconfidently, thus:

"Guzzante, says Mr. Gladstone [Nineteenth Century, June, 18921, according to the commentators, is Wissant, near Calais...... But is Guzzante Wissant? An embankment from Bruges to Wissant would have been at least a hundred and twenty miles in length, a gigantic work, utterly inconceivable in the fourteenth century, and Dante would have been guilty of an anti-climax in adding as a second simile the embankment of the Brenta at Padua. No; Guzzante is Cadzand, a port a little to the north-east of Bruges; and we may fancy Dante there comparing the German Ocean with the tideless Mediterranean. The Italian form was Cazzante, and Guzzante is probably a copyist's error. The commentators who misled Mr. Gladstone cannot have looked at the map."

In the first place, so self-confident a critic should be sure of his ground. Mr. Gladstone does not write of Guzzante, but of Guizzantea distinction with no difference, perhaps, but one that makes for precision. In the second, is it quite certain that Guizzante is Cadzand? Is it also equally certain that Cazzante is the Italian form for Cadzand? MR. ALGER thinks so, and his sureness has received undue prominence (as I think) in a reference by Scartazzini in his 'Dantologia.' But the absence of proof for the statement is as significant as is the ignoring of it by later writers. Thus Mr. Tozer (1901) has in loco :

variants of several Anglo-Norman poems, such as Wittsant, Huitsand, Wizant, &c., and the testimony of many monastic chronicles, early and medieval. The article is as near an approach to finality as it is possible to achieve, and inferentially vindicates Mr. Gladstone from the charge of being "misled by the commentators."

But here MR. ALGER again steps into the arena with discomfiting result (Academy 14 January, 1893). There was a joint in his harness which Mr. Toynbee was not slow to perceive, the former being "misled" by a misquotation from or a mistranslation of a passage in Benvenuto da Imola. One line from Mr. Toynbee's rejoinder (Academy, 21 January, 1893) will explain the nature of the misleading

"Benvenuto says absolutely nothing about the length of the dyke by xv milliaria'; he simply says that the tide was receding 15 miles." The defeat was signal, as it cut the heart out of MR. ALGER'S contention, and was gallantly acknowledged by him in the next issue of the journal.

Curiously enough, however, Mr. Toynbees own armour was not flawless, for his assertion in his first article that "Cadzand never was within the boundaries of Flanders-called Gaggante in Italian," was rebutted by M. Paul Fredericq :

"This was an error in medieval geography. As a matter of fact Cadsand was situated in an island belonging to the county of Flanders in the mouth of the river Scheldt, at the very time Dante was writing. This situation remained the same till the beginning of the seventeenth century." This may be, but it in no wise identifies Cadzand with Guizzante. Nor is it material whether Cadzand was of Flemish or any other nationality. Nor, again, whether the Italian for it be Cazzante or Gaggante, does it follow etymologically that Guizzante is signified. And, further, I see nothing either "absurd " or inconceivable" in an embankment from the fourteenth century, even though the line a coast point opposite Bruges to Wissant in was 120 miles in length. Dyke-building was no more difficult than church-building, and we tolerably well know what the latter was in the Middle Ages. Besides, if it was possible to construct an embankment from to the Scheldt, it would be equally so to Bruges (or "the coast in its neighbourhood") continue it thence to Wissant. As a matter of fact, as Dean Plumptre observes (note in loco),

"Guizzante: Wissant, a town between Calais and Cape Gris Nez; it was known in the Middle Ages as the starting-point for the crossing to Eng. land. This place and Bruges mark the western and eastern limits of the coast of Flanders, as known to Dante; so the general meaning is on the Flemish coast. Bruges is used roughly here for the coast in its neighbourhood, since it lies inland from Ostend." This is clear and definite without dogmatism, though possibly beneath MR. ALGER'S notice. Not so, however, a singularly clear and persuasive article by Mr. Paget Toynbee in the Academy of 10 December, 1892, wherein he marshals a goodly array of authorities in favour of the identification of Guizzante with Wissant. "Guizzante," he claims, as fearlessly as MR. ALGER contends for Cadzand, "is the undoubted Italian form of Wissant, proved by a reference to Villani, Poi ne venne [Edw. III.] a Guizzante""; and, further, the identification of the Italian "Wissant, the harbour of which is now choked Guizzante with Wissant is confirmed by the Provençal form Guissan, by the OF. Guit-up and disused, was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the usual port of embarcation for England, sand in the 'Chanson de Roland,' the striking [and] its neighbourhood abounds in remains of

fortifications and embankments raised on natural

dunes."

Finally, where the anti-climax exists "in
adding as a second simile the embankment
of the Brenta at Padua" I fail to recognize.
Quality rather than quantity was in Dante's
thought in connexion with the "duri mar-
gini," and his travels furnished him with
illustrations of it. Either reference would
have served his purpose; both are given
with, presumably, the very pardonable
vanity of the travelled author. The claims
of Ghent to identity with Guizzante are too
nebulous for serious consideration. Simi-
larly, the variants Guzzante Guizzante are
inconsiderable. As Grattan said of the
curosity" of an Irish witness, "The word is
not murdered; only its eye is knocked out."
4. Let me-appropriately, as I judge, in
this column-lodge an indignant protest
against the slanderous treatment meted out
to Dante by Sardou and Moreau in their
joint drama bearing his name and staged
last year in London and Manchester. I have
already done so in the local press, and have
reaped the thanks of Bishop Casartelli,
Prof. Valgimigli, and others. The play itself
I have not seen, but I gleaned its merits (or
rather demerits) from various critiques and
from the booklet "presented by Sir Henry
Irving" to those who saw it. The latter
purports to be "some explanatory notes by
an Italian Student," and is divided into 'A
Note on the Story,' a 'Synopsis of Dante's
Life,' The Symbolical Conception of Sardou
and Moreau's" Dante," "The Central Episode
of the Drama,' and a 'Prologue,' containing
"The Episode of Count Ugolino' and a detailed
synopsis of the four acts of the play. It is
in the first and fourth of these chapters that
lie the venom and travesty to which I take
indignant exception. Here is a sample of
both :-

"Among the girl friends of Beatrice was one Pia dei Tolomei, who has been forced into a loveless marriage with Nello della Pietra, a depraved and ferocious Florentine magnate. The unhappy young wife has, through her intimacy with Beatrice, become acquainte with Dante, and at the death of Beatrice the mutual bereavement of the two has gradually developed into an ardent mutual love. During Nello's absence on affairs of state, a child, Gemma, has been born to Pia and Dante." The Pia is, of course, the Pia of 'Purg.,' v. 133:

Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma; and there is in the passage quoted a sufficiency of truth to give it a semblance of fact. But the calumny and perversion of history are doubly monstrous; and it is no justification

of either, but the rather a deepening of their
guilt, to admit that "the events are partly
invented by the dramatists, partly his-
torical "; that "our Dante is not the his-
torical Dante"; and that "Gemma is a
character entirely created by the imagination
of the dramatists, who, nevertheless, are not
alone in giving an illegitimate child to Dante,
for certain critics, rightly or wrongly, have
cast doubts on the legitimacy of Dante's
daughter Beatrice." And it is from the
"doubts" of these "certain critics" that an
unwarrantable slander is made "the central
episode of the drama." Verily these dra-
matists have out-Boccaccioed Boccaccio! It
is sheer trifling with common honesty, in the
face of such allegations, to assert boldly, as
"Sardou explained in an interview, There
is more of the soul than of the body of Dante
in our drama.'” There is vastly too much of
the latter, and vastly too little of the former,
in it. As for the facts of the case, the only
one in the above passage which approaches
truth is the relationship between Pia and
Nello. But of the friendship between Pia
and Beatrice, and still less of the guilty inti-
macy between Pia and Dante, no shred of
historic evidence exists, so far as I know.
The poet was ignorant, as Scartazzini says-
"Dante non ne sapeva nulla "-of Pia's mys-
terious death; that he was equally ignorant
of any personal acquaintance with her in life
may be inferred with similar certitude from
the silence of history. Further, the identifi
cation of her with the "Donna Gentile" of
the Convito' and 'Vita Nuova' is as arbi-
trary as it is baseless, and founded only, as
the playwrights admit, upon a wretched

play on words," the "bella pietra" of the Canzoniere.' I hope to deal with this Pia when these notes reach her place in the 'D. C.'; meanwhile let this much be said here as a permanent protest against this recent attempt to besmirch the memories of the great Florentine and the hapless Siennese. Such pieces as Sardou's 'Dante' not only grossly distort history and sully the grandest of characters, but they are not calculated to purify the stage-a triple indictment which should discredit them in the eyes of all lovers. of historic truth and moral beauty.

J. B. MCGOVERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

"A wretched, rhyming list of booksellers in London and Westminster" (Nichols). Dell was a bookseller, first in

Tower Street, and afterwards in Holborn. If not the author, he was certainly the publisher of this poem |(D.N.B.").

NOTES AND QUERIES.